Squat masters, I call upon ye.

[Kirro]

For as long as I have been lifting I have been doing b!tch azz 1/4 squats. I want to learn how to do full dollar squats. Are there any stretches or exercises I can do to gain the flexibility to go to/below parallel?

I'm tired cheating myself out of proper squats.

 

[TheStig]

You wanna do a lot of air squats and make sure your form is damn near perfect. Start with your feet a bit wider than shoulder width, point them out a bit, and sink your butt down while keeping your back straight. Imagine you are deliberately trying to stick out your butt so your back stays straight. It's really hard to explain this through an internet forum, so I will leave you to watch these videos from Elliott Hulse, they help soooo much. Since I've followed this technique in the past few months I've gone from squatting 315 lbs 3 times, to 385 lbs twice. The sh1t works.

http://www.youtube.com/user/strengthcamp/videos?query=squatting

You don't have to watch them all, but definitely watch the ones which have to do with form, getting low and going heavy.

 

[user43770]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rq8CWv8UPAI

Guy has a series of videos that are all very informative; they helped me with my squat tremendously.

 

[Kirro]

Thanks a lot for the links guys..I've been watching for the past day and I'm trying every stretch. I'll test it out on my next leg day. Starting light of course.

 

[ProDJ26]

Like my trainer told me years ago if you dont do them right dont do them at all. Start with the bar and work your way up. You may not be able to do any at first but soon you will

 

[AmIAFC]

The biggest hurdle you'll have to overcome is pride/ego. You'll learn, rather painfully, that you'll have to drop some plates in order to execute the proper squats you've deprived yourself from, and that's a hard pill for any lifter to swallow.

I've had to do it myself, and it was heart-wrenching to drop 90 lbs from my routine just to do squats properly. I went from "repping" 315 down to 220s, suddenly I was a chump, but I lived with it and noticed results...

1.) My knees hurt less and less, no longer sore
2.) My thighs got bigger, stronger
3.) My ass got bigger, more full
4.) My hamstrings got bigger
5.) More importantly, it strengthened my core more.
6.) In addition to these, my other workouts improved, because proper squats makes you stronger all around.

I eventually got back to my original weight, but it took some time. It was definitely worth it, and now the few serious lifters in my gym give me some respect for actually doing it properly and I can only smile when I see others in the same place I was.

 

[Kirro]

The biggest hurdle you'll have to overcome is pride/ego. You'll learn, rather painfully, that you'll have to drop some plates in order to execute the proper squats you've deprived yourself from, and that's a hard pill for any lifter to swallow.

I've had to do it myself, and it was heart-wrenching to drop 90 lbs from my routine just to do squats properly. I went from "repping" 315 down to 220s, suddenly I was a chump, but I lived with it and noticed results...

1.) My knees hurt less and less, no longer sore
2.) My thighs got bigger, stronger
3.) My ass got bigger, more full
4.) My hamstrings got bigger
5.) More importantly, it strengthened my core more.
6.) In addition to these, my other workouts improved, because proper squats makes you stronger all around.

I eventually got back to my original weight, but it took some time. It was definitely worth it, and now the few serious lifters in my gym give me some respect for actually doing it properly and I can only smile when I see others in the same place I was.

I take more pride/ego in proper form and my appearance than I do the arbitrary numbers on my lifts. When I realized 1/4, 1/2 squats were hurting my knees and I was cheating myself out of proper development I immediately dropped the weight and started practicing, stretching etc. So far I'm reaching parallel, some reps I get below that but I'm still a bit away from getting below parallel without rounding my back.